Eclipse 98

1998 Feb 26

Sorry for such a late report but things get a bit complicated sometimes.
After a seven hours drive we arrived to Paraguan‡ at La Voz de Venezuela, a
radio station, on wednesday afternoon. Into my car were my partner Andrˇs
Valencia, Roger Curry from NEFAS who was the inspiring soul of our trip
during our many desperate moments and my son Arnaldo Jr. All of the women
from the tour went to a cousin's house.

Telescopes were stationed and we started doing some images for the
web-cast. At that moment we found out that the video camera we were
supposed could not be used due to some signal problems. We decided to
change cameras, two more of them at hand fortunatelly, but the solar filter
had to be fitted with some carboard and masking tape. Near midnight some
star watching and a brief sleep.

By six o'clock in the morning of the event the sky was clear, but on the
eastern horizon were standing some not wanted clouds. By midmorning all of
them vanished and all we had to do was to wait in anxiety.

First contact was like blowing a horn on a battle field, everyone started
to run and cameras were clicking. We started the web-cast with a rate of
one image per minute and that changed at between 18:09:18 and 18:13:02 UTC
for the totality to one image every 15 seconds. We planned to have one
every 5 seconds but were told that it generated problems with Win95. We
were also told latter that CANTV's site got clogged with more than one
million hits for 40 minutes at around totality.

It was really an experience that will not be forgoten, and as my wife says,
we must go to Europe next year.

Some images from the web-cast are available at
ARVAL's site plus some
photographs taken at prime focus.

Thanks to all for your support messagges before the event. And a special
thanks to you Roger, you are really something.